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Rental Application Form - Pennsylvania
What Is a Pennsylvania Rental Application?
A Pennsylvania Rental Application is a document that a prospective tenant must fill out with valid information and hand over to the owner or manager of the place they would like to rent. The application is an initial step in the tenant screening process, and ends when a landlord is ready to offer their place to the prospective tenant or deny them.
You can download a free Pennsylvania Rental Application form here or make your own using our online form builder.
A Rental Application Form from Pennsylvania is supposed to provide information that will help an owner or property manager make a decision about a prospective tenant. That's why its content must include any valuable data that can influence this decision, such as personal information, rental history, employment history, other sources of income, vehicle information, credit history, references, etc. In order not to miss anything important, a landlord should include in their application form further questions, such as:
- Has the applicant ever been convicted by a court of law?
- Has the applicant ever been convicted for any other felony offense?
- Has the applicant ever filed for bankruptcy?
The answers to these questions will help characterize a prospective tenant. Depending on the explanations a prospective tenant will give, a landlord will see if they are reliable, responsible, and able to pay the rent.
Pennsylvania Rental Application Laws
The relationship between tenants and landlords in Pennsylvania are regulated by several documents, which include:
- Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951 . The Act regulates the relationship between parties when they enter the lease agreement and states important terms. For example, real property may be leased for the term of no more than three years in an oral or written agreement, if the term is more than three years then the agreement must be written and signed by the parties;
- Amendment to Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951 . The Amendment adds a section "Disposition of Abandoned Personal Property" to the Act. It is dedicated to times when a tenant has relinquished possession of the real property;
- Consolidated Statutes, Title 68 "Real and Personal Property." The document contains an excessive amount of information on various topics, such as real estate foreclosure, management of condominiums and cooperatives, home inspections, residential real property, etc.
Pennsylvania Rental Application Fee
Even though the State of Pennsylvania has a system of laws regulating leases, none of the documents stated above designate the amount a landlord can charge a potential tenant for a rental application fee, and it's not refundable.
The only situation in which a landlord can refund an application fee is when they have already found a tenant before they got another rental application. In this case, since the landlord didn't use the tenant screening services and didn't perform the background check (the initial reason why the applicant was charged the fee), they can pay it back.
A right step for the landlord is to include these two statements in a Pennsylvania Rental Application Form, as well as the place for a prospective tenant's signature:
- The rental application fee is non-refundable;
- A filer gives consent to disclose information to run a background check.
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